Always Be Careful of Your Words
Always Be Careful of Your Words
The fierce battle Lee Ha-yul put on certainly left an enormous impression, but strictly by outcome, he was eliminated in the tournament's round of sixteen.
Of course, only a handful of lunatics would dismiss it as "just the round of sixteen," but that was what the record showed.
Atra wasn't especially troubled by that.
Above all, she didn't have the slightest intention of blaming him.
There was no reason to.
The opponent was who he was, and more importantly, she knew Lee Ha-yul had given everything he had within the realm of possibility.
Blaming him was out of the question. This was a time when she should be showering him with praise for a job well done.
[I'm sorry...]
"......"
That had been her intention...
Atra fought the twitch at the corners of her mouth and averted her gaze.
Right after the finals ended, Lee Ha-yul had quietly come to find her. She hadn't thought much of it—she'd heard he was planning to meet Ellia's family after his evaluation, since they were close.
And then he showed up like this.
She didn't understand why Lee Ha-yul was standing before her, so dejected, with his head hanging low.
She didn't understand why he was so hunched up, as if he expected to be yelled at.
And she didn't understand why his whole attitude suggested he was certain Atra would scold him...
She felt eyes on her from the side. Turning her head, she found Liana staring at her like she was a piece of trash.
- What's with that filthy look?
- Right in front of you.
'......'
Where Liana pointed, there was Lee Ha-yul, completely withdrawn into himself. Atra couldn't manage any more sound transmissions and closed her mouth.
With her emotions so tangled, a sigh slipped out before she could stop it.
"Sigh..."
- Flinch!
Lee Ha-yul's shoulders jerked violently, and his whole body began to tremble.
'Ah.'
Atra finally realized her mistake and her eyes flew open wide.
She had let out a deep sigh right in front of a child already cowering in fear of a reprimand...
- Uh...
A pained sound leaked from Lee Ha-yul's tightly closed lips, and Liana, standing beside him, shot Atra a look of pure horror.
Startled, Atra flailed her hands.
First, she tried to correct the misunderstanding. That he didn't need to be so downcast. That she would absolutely never have a reason to scold him. That given the circumstances, his current result was more than sufficient—
- I have no particular thoughts on this special admission business. I won't close my eyes and deny it, but by the same token, I have no intention of blindly approving of it, either.
She tried to set things right.
Her body went rigid as words she had spoken in the past suddenly surfaced in her mind.
- I'll go along with it since the Headmaster chose you, but it's also true that I have my doubts since nothing has been proven yet. Do you understand? If you were an ordinary cadet, that might be different, but you, who entered on a special admission, are expected to perform well above a certain standard.
Those were her own words from the past.
- And it's not just me—everyone's eyes, and the public's eyes, are on you. Circumstances aside, you are the first and only special admission chosen by the Master of the Cradle.
They were words she'd thrown out considering Lee Ha-yul's position, partly to instill a sense of caution in him.
- You've only just awakened, so I'll let it pass, but you won't be able to hide behind that excuse forever.
"......"
Atra's face went pale. She understood, just a little, why Lee Ha-yul had that dejected look.
Why he looked so frightened, why... he thought Atra would scold him.
The words Atra herself had forgotten... Lee Ha-yul must have remembered every single one.
In the end, it had all circled back to the karma of her past.
"S-Sorry..."
Atra squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped Lee Ha-yul, still hunched up, tightly in her arms.
Each of her movements made him flinch, and he had looked so pitiful like that, but now she held him close.
At first, he seemed bewildered, but then, as if reassured by the hand stroking his head, he buried his face against her chest.
They say you have to watch every word when raising a child.
Atra suddenly recalled a phrase she'd picked up somewhere in the past.
The child already had an unhappy past, and his present was precarious in many ways... and yet, in the past, she had poured out such harsh, thoughtless words.
Feeling a murderous intent toward her past self, Atra tightened her arms around Lee Ha-yul, who stirred softly in her embrace.
...An unhappy past.
Lee Ha-yul, like Atra, had lost his parents at a young age.
But Atra had immediately awakened as a superhuman and lived in high-quality educational institutions.
Lee Ha-yul had to drag his body, damaged by a fire, through back alleys before he could enter a dilapidated orphanage.
Even there, he received little real help; and after that orphanage burned down, the next one he was sent to was much the same.
With that kind of past, he would have felt an intense deprivation of affection, and the lack of proper education would have left him missing some common sense.
...Which must be why he didn't even refuse when the Heir of the Azure Sea abruptly pulled him into a hug.
Atra's eyes, as she patted Lee Ha-yul's back, grew sharp and still.
That was... another part of what Atra, who called herself his teacher, had to teach him.
Not just how to raise his combative strength—she also had to teach him the knowledge a person needs to live.
That when a stranger, or someone you're not particularly close to, hugs you, you should naturally refuse.
Atra herself wasn't much of a decent person, but what she had to teach was clear.
Time passed.
Atra, who had been staring down at Lee Ha-yul—who had fallen fast asleep in her arms as if his tension had melted away—suddenly scanned her surroundings.
When she lowered the isolation barrier, the empty interior of the special seats greeted her.
Liana had been dragged away by the midterm evaluation grading, and everyone else had already left; no one was there.
"......"
After a moment's thought, Atra rose to her feet.
Naturally, Lee Ha-yul, still in her arms, came with her. Soothing him when he squirmed at the sudden movement, Atra started walking.
It felt wrong to wake a child sleeping so soundly. Since he was already out, it was best to just let him rest.
With that in mind, Atra headed toward her own quarters.
- Ding!
On the way, the hologram projector hanging around Lee Ha-yul's neck rang with an alert.
Wondering what it was, she glanced at it and saw a message from the contact labeled 'Hong Yeon-hwa.'
"......"
- Tap.
Atra's gesture made the hologram disappear. A quick adjustment right after switched it to silent mode.
* * *
Dilapidated factories are scattered all over. No matter how much people prattle on about peace, big and small incidents always break out.
An abandoned factory in Germany was like that. The city nearby had collapsed for one reason or another, and the machinery that probably once bustled were now ancient, useless scrap.
The inside of the derelict factory—a place where, at most, you'd only get chunks of scrap metal for your trouble, even thieves didn't bother with it.
A man leaning back against a creaky, jumbled chair of junk tapped his leg with a listless air.
- Kzzzt...
Frowning at the grating noise, the man shifted his gaze.
In front of him lay something rectangular.
The frame was black, and the glass panel in the center frothed with static.
It was a communication device that ran on electricity, not mana—the kind used only before the Great Cataclysm.
"What a pain in the ass."
In other words, it was a heap of scrap that was considered active service hundreds of years ago.
The man let his head tilt back weakly, faced with the reality that he was using a communication device that was now far beyond retirement and should have been respectfully buried ages ago.
Who in this day and age didn't know about holograms? And who didn't use them?
From snot-nosed brats to wizened old men full of wrinkles, everyone wore smartwatches around their wrists.
It was the very pinnacle of civilization representing the modern era. If you didn't know about holograms, you'd be treated like a barbarian.
"Fucking hell. I used to be a young master from a noble house..."
The man felt as if he himself had become a barbarian.
How had he ended up stuck in a dump like this...
It was right around the time his muttered laments were trailing off.
- Kzzzt─!
The communication device, which had only been displaying static, now projected a screen. The picture quality was garbage, and the feed kept stuttering.
It was because the signal was being disrupted by mana wave disturbances.
He couldn't help feeling a surge of self-loathing every time he stared at that piece-of-shit screen.
If it were up to him, he'd get a smartwatch or at least a hologram projector, but... if he did that, his location would be exposed in an instant, and a subjugation squad would come flooding in. That was obviously out of the question.
An honest citizen could use them without reservation, but a lowly criminal bastard like him had to keep running just to avoid having his position pinpointed.
The man let out a heavy sigh and stared at the screen with dry eyes.
The screen bustled with motion. The viewpoint shifted; weapons clashed, magic manifested, and bursts of bright color erupted.
It was footage of Siyoram's tournament main round, which always stirred up the world every year around this time.
From the looks of it, they were playing a highlight reel. The man propped his chin in his hand and stared at the screen.
"...Brings back memories."
After taking in the scene for a bit, the man felt a strange emotion.
He had once stood on that stage too. A time in his life, fierce in its own way, when they called him a rising star and he competed for the top seat.
The man reflected on the past.
A prestigious family name, enough to take pride in.
The expectations and hope that poured in from all around him.
The certainty he could feel in his own potential.
His own roaring flame that blazed bright, using all of it as fuel.
A time when his heart had been filled with confidence and hope for the future.
"Heh..."
A laugh suddenly escaped him at the pathetic state of his actual present self.
He had never imagined even slightly that he would meet this kind of future.
Reality was a gutter—a completely fucked-up situation.
He'd been sitting there for a long while, head hanging, snickering to himself like that, when the screen changed.
- Thump!
His heart suddenly pounded hard. As his will blazed to life, the man cut off his laughter and turned his eyes.
A peculiar figure had been caught on the screen.
Two eyes shut tight, as though blind.
A left arm that was completely missing, as if it had been thrown away somewhere and forgotten.
A frail, slight body that looked like it would simply drop dead if it took one wrong hit.
At a glance, he looked more like a high-class gigolo and appeared to belong on disability pension.
And yet, a bizarre sight: that figure dashing in all directions across a waterlogged stage, lithe and nimble in a way completely at odds with his appearance, rampaging wildly.
"That guy, huh."
No matter how deep he was holed up in a remote, seedy place like this, news still reached him.
Siyoram's Special Admission Cadet.
To those without problems, he was the next-generation hero, receiving bundles of expectation and hope. To the garbage bins around him, he was someone to keep a watch on—a subject of all kinds of bluster about how they ought to nip him in the bud.
- Thump... Whoosh!
"Well, well..."
The man exhaled a faint breath at the pounding of his heart and the ember that flared up once more.
Seeing that thing—which usually just lay flat on its face—react like this, it seemed it wasn't all hot air.
Though in his case, it wasn't wariness; it was a twisted kind of expectation.
He shook his head aimlessly and took a cigarette from his pocket, sticking it in his mouth.
Fwoosh... He conjured a flame at his fingertip and brought it to the end of the cigarette.
- WHOOSH!
Suddenly, the firepower shot up, and the cigarette was incinerated without leaving a speck of ash.
"You bitch."
The man grimaced hard and looked down at his solar plexus. Because of that fucking thing, he couldn't control his firepower.
'Fucking hell, it was my last one.'
The man, who had uselessly raked a hand through his hair, stood up just as the screen switched again. A caption reading 'Finals' appeared at the bottom of the screen.
The man turned his head toward the screen. In the center of the stage, he could see raging flame and a tidal wave violently tearing at each other.
"......"
The man's gaze bored into the screen.
As time passed, the flame and the tidal wave receded, and the mist created by their mutual onslaught slowly settled.
And then.
Hong Yeon-hwa came into the man's view, her expression so murderous it looked like she could rip several people apart.
The man burst out laughing at that, shook his head from side to side, and turned around.
"She's still got that temper."
The light of the communication device illuminated the man's back as he turned away.
Even in the darkness of the abandoned factory, his red hair was unmistakable, catching the light like a burning fire.